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The others grumbled their discontent but said no more, all except Edris waiting with bitter expressions.
I thought about how to begin. My throat suddenly dry and my shoulders tense. Tiernan placed a warm hand on my shoulder, lending me his strength. Finn gave me a small nod from where he sat, his face grim.
I supposed there was no sense in dancing around the facts.
I cleared my throat and did my best to meet each of their impatient stares.
“The Mad King lives.”
I toldthem what I knew. Tiernan and Finn did their best to help me explain it all. We told them about the missing Fae, and how the Mad King was the one who’d taken them. And how they were now almost certainly dead. We told them about the Blessed Blade, and his plans to take back the Night Court’s throne.
We didn’t tell them about what happened a week prior. Nor did I feel the need to explain to them about my Graces just yet. They had enough to digest as it was.
Their reactions ranged from blatant disbelief to stupefied awe, to open worry. Edris sat quietly, taking in the information we presented them. Silas’ hands were white-knuckled fists atop the table. His jaw tense—his eyes ringed in red.
“You’re certain,” Silas growled, more a statement than a question.
I nodded, “I’m so sorry.”
Silas stood in such a rush his chair flipped over behind him. He took a deep, shaking breath, visibly attempting to calm himself. I applauded the effort. I didn’t have a sister, or any siblings save for the one who’d died before I was born, so I didn’t know how he felt. But I imagined it was agony trying to maintain composure, “Do we know where his forces are gathering? Or how many lives—how many Graces he’s been able to steal?”
I couldn’t bring myself to answer him. We knew so little it was pathetic, and the simple word stuck in my throat, not allowing me to utter it. “Um, well—”
“No.” It was Finn who answered him, “My brother, and I have combed the entire expanse of the Wastes and found nothing. There were remnants of an abandoned camp near the western shores, but it housed no more than fifty Fae.”
“A bluff?” The bearded noble at the other end of the table barked, “Isn’t it obvious? You say Valin was the one who told you these things? The bastard was just trying to frighten you.”
Silas scowled, “I never liked him.”
I shoved my hair away from my sweat-slicked chest, “It isn’t a bluff. Trust me.”
Silas paced the small space between his chair and the wall, “We send scouts to locate him and this—thisarmyof his then—”
“Wehavesent scouts. They’ve found nothing.”
“Then we send more!” Silas stopped, his fists slamming down against the table so hard the wood trembled where I sat.
I inhaled deeply through my nose, “I agree, Silas. We must find him. Until we do, we have no way of knowing what we’re dealing with.”
A vein jutted out from the war captain’s neck, “And when we find him, we’ll crush him and his army before they get anywhere near this court.”
I chewed the inside of my lip. That would be the best solution, but why did I feel like that wasn’t how it would happen? Something about Ricon, and about the way Valin had said he would take back the throne—as though it was the obvious—no, theonlyoutcome made me wonder what the Mad King had up his sleeve.
Finn was deep in heated conversation with Silas, explaining exactly where he and Kade had happened upon the abandoned camp, and also every place they’d searched.
There were forests in the Wastes, Silas had suggested. Forests of great pine trees that never lost their needles, and grand leafy trees that formed a ceiling-like canopy over the earth below. “They could be there,” Silas said, but they had already searched the forests, and it would be impossible to hide an entire army from sight there, anyway.
We were grasping at straws. And Iknew—somewhere out there, the Mad King was readying for war while we bickered and fumbled.
“You must ready the Horde armies, Silas,” I said, swallowing against the quaking in my chest.
He halted his conversation with Finn, and both men looked at me with a mixture of horror and confusion in their eyes, “Majesty,” Silas began, “We have no idea what we’re dealing with, here. And until we do—”
“I want my armies ready, Silas,” I said, stronger. With no room for argument, “Call them in.”
There had been little reason to have our entire army together in centuries. I knew how it worked—more or less. The Horde had five-thousand fighting men and women, but only a thousand were active and training at a time, cycling out with the other four thousand every forty days. There were crops that needed tending, and families that needed feeding.
After almost a thousand years without war, there was no reason to have five-thousand men almost permanently removed from their families.
